teacher

elementary school teacher

education specialist

instructional aide

speech language pathologist

Aspire Public Schools

The management in their IT Department is horrific and lacking and you will be pushed to meet deadlines on tasks that are near impossible time-scale wise, monotonous, and tedious. Any task that you fail to perform successfully can be used against you in a negative manner by the management and the senior members of the team. Therefore, you will have to constantly pull miracles with this department or else you will be immediately seen as a complete failure (which can lead you in a position to "force resign"). As a result, the management is very deceitful and conniving, so just execute your tasks perfectly and don't question them. Furthermore, don't even bother contributing in the team meetings any new ideas or better ways to execute future road map plans as they will just be ignored despite being 1000x better plans than what the management has in mind. Overall the management doesn't treat you well, gives you near-impossible tasks, ignorant of better and innovating ideas and can deceit you into a position of being "leaving the organization" if you fail or go against their uncertain roadmap.

Morale in this department is low and no one in the seniority half of the team is willing to work happily with the newer and lower-ranked staff. Therefore, you are going to be often alone and working by yourself to solve issues that are often thrown from the uppers as tasks that are overwhelming, difficult and high risk of failure.

As you can tell by now that the department is very bias with favorites. The seniority staff is really chosen to be the select few that the management likes and the newer staff or lower-ranked staff are the people the management doesn't have an interest for and they are there to take the grunt of negativity the department generates and are very disposable. Most likely an IT position posted on this site are for the latter and like the management, the seniority staff takes all the easy and fluff tasks the IT department needs to complete and throws all the crucial, tedious and difficult tasks downward.

The infrastructure of this department is outdated, ridiculous and old. You will be using a ticketing system from a well-known company but it is custom-designed and sadly, the custom-design makes it one of the most annoying systems in the world. Furthermore, phone support is non-existent as only one person has to provide the phone support for like over ten-thousand end-users and even then, you (the new guy) will probably have to provide most of your work day alone to be on the phone (even though doing other time-consuming tasks), so get ready to multitask and be ready to shoulder-hold a handset while working most of the day.

The servers that run in this organization are mostly old and breaks down a lot and so does the network. You will get LOTS of annoyed end-users that will complain about not working printers and internet and that is due to a poorly-implemented Windows Server environment. Sure they have been upgrading to newer servers slowly shortly before I left, but the infrastructure overall is still one of the worst I have ever seen. The management will say that it is due to low funding, but I can assure you that isn't the true reason. Most of the end-user computers are also outdated (a lot from the early 2000's) so get ready to spend hours fixing common stuff on computers that should be laid to rest by now (again it is due to "low-funding").

The department is not well-received by many teachers and staff so do expect a lot of not courteous, tech illiterate and rude end-users. You will often face backlash from such said staff, as any polite ways you will try to resolve their issues will be seen by them as an insult to them (you will be profusely apologizing 95% of the time as it is your fault their problems happened, despite being something like user error or failing old equipment). Again, this is due to the notorious history of the department and the management that runs it and the drama that occurred in between.

There has been quite a few of people who "left the organization" and not many that has been filling the slots in the department. For a better note, for the few that has been filling the slots, some have left after a couple of months. Therefore let this be a warning to anyone that is applying to the IT Department of this organization. I would simply ignore the effort to apply here as the rewards are not even worth the time (until the department gets completely revamped by a new set of management).

Otherwise, if you are applying as a teacher or a position in the organization's other departments, then I will say go for it as most of the non-IT department folks are really nice, caring and dedicated (and they do a lot of social events during work, something you will NOT see in the IT department). So definitely apply if you are not IT. However, if you are IT, just simply walk away from applying. It is NOT worth it.

I held two positions here. one was a teacher and one for support. When I was in the support position, I was thrown into weird situations and even had to be admin for certain tasks. For instance my first week I got yelled at because the diagnostic tests students took did not reach the threshold they wanted. How is that my fault???? Also I was thrown into other positions and was even told that my job was on the line if they were not completed properly.

Also you are expendable to their eyes. 

The principal can do whatever they want, have multiple complaints and will still keep his or her job. While if you had one complaint, you can get fired/ not rehired. 

Good, pay is very reasonable, teachers do get 6 weeks of summer, 3 weeks off winter. only thing is each position has different salary scale. Teaching years do not go towards say Assistant principal scale, which is different. If you are a veteran teacher, have good classroom management and are aware that in this school kids cannot really get suspended (one kid brought a huge bag of weed and nothing happened to him!) then this position can suit you. Just make sure you kiss up to the upper management and you should be okay.

The teachers here are very burned out. There is even a track where some teachers only have prep on a Friday. 

Also another very bad thing is the grading scale is very skewed.  80%+ A 60% _ B 40%+ C 20%+ D. It is almost impossible to fail a student, and if you do, management goes after you and makes you pass them. 

I even saw some teachers just give students grades so that they don't fill out extra paperwork for failing a student. There are a lot of ethical issues here and I really hope someone really looks into this. 

Above all the pay is decent, what you have to deal with is not. 



My experience working at Aspire Public Schools was very disappointing. At the start of the year, I was wrongly accused of being insensitive for using descriptive terms instead of names. From there, the lack of support from administration became very clear.
I was given a class with several students who had IEPs, but there was no consistent one-to-one aide support. The special education staff rarely provided hands-on assistance, and aides rotated in and out without offering meaningful help beyond documentation. Despite repeatedly asking for behavioral support and guidance with the curriculum, I was met with false promises and little follow-through. Calls for help from administrators often went unanswered, even when students were leaving the classroom or struggling emotionally.
The workload was overwhelming—teaching all subjects with minimal prep time, no real time for grading, and weekends consumed by planning. The administration seemed more focused on appearances than providing genuine support for teachers or students.
Overall, this experience left me feeling unsupported, overworked, and disheartened. I hope Aspire will seriously reflect on how they treat their educators and provide the resources teachers and students truly need to succeed

The idea in these poor schools is that surveillance and outside management will improve teachers. But teachers are generally able to fix much of their own mistakes and improve themselves. My manager knew less about educational theories and research than did I but she was regularly micromanaging each aspect of my work. She didn't give me enough time to make changes before she would recheck on me. Some of her advice was directly contradictory to prevalent academic research about student motivations and psychology, so I wondered about whether I should show her the big body of research she was contradicting; quietly disregard her irrelevant comments; or obediently jump off the cliff with her to both of our deaths. This surveillance culture is excessive: students are tested weekly and almost daily. Teachers are monitored; micromanaged; surveilled; assessed too too much. Aspire seems to assume it is hiring bad teachers, who need to be constantly monitored. I am internally motivated to self-improve, but my inner motivations were not acknowledged.  Because teachers are monitored so often, they are loathe to admit to not knowing anything, so the culture becomes competitive between teachers.

Working for Aspire this past school year has been the best teaching experience of my career by far. It is clear that leadership at the national, regional and school levels have made workplace culture a priority. Expecations are high, but they are accompanied by a system of positive support that comes across as very authentic. There are no "gotchas". These people want everyone to be successful, and they are willing to put in the work from the top down. You welcome guests in your class here, because you don't worry about them looking for something wrong. You feel like they are there to help you, for real.

Beyond that the pay is competitive to, if not better than local school districts. Insurance premiums are far better. I pay only $70 per pay period for a family of 5 in medical insurance.

Needless to say, I plan on being here for a while!

I had anxiety working there. Cat-y staff, everything is your fault, training is superficial and doesnt relate to the real situation, and as someone else pointed out, the kids get away with murder. There are some great kids, but some are just constantly excused for everything and there is not accountability. They are pushed through the system so that the school keeps receiving funding.
Oh, and the curriculum is prescribed so you have no creative freedom.  Instead you are supposed to follow checklists over checklists because what is more important is how your classroom is set up and that you don't get kids in trouble and keep them inside the classroom, even if they are loud, swear, walk around, insult you, disrupt other kids learning, or even get into fights.
The raise from a year to year is 400 max. They get you by promising growth opportunities but those either never fully happen or you are just critiqued and so say bye bye to any other raises for "evolving as a teacher"

Run away.

The average teacher here is fresh out of an education program, and the management doesn't know how to treat more advanced teachers. The dean for my school micromanaged my classroom, which disregarded my ideas and my own teaching style. Everything at this school is standardized and cookie-cutter: testing, classroom design; teaching; professional development. But for more advanced students and more advanced teachers, there should be--but aren't--expectations of originality; creativity; research-based innovations; and individuality. None of these concepts were encouraged in the slightest. Anytime I innovated--even a research-based and evidence-based innovation--my manager grew alarmed. She outright told me that Aspire doesn't value graduate training and graduate educations in its design or in its compensation.

I was threatened by a parent. The parent threatened to hurt me by pushing her body at my chest, for a completely false accusation (She claimed that I yelled at her child, when another person did. She clearly picked on me, because I look weak and will do nothing back). At least the staff there pulled her away from me. When I told the district about the incident and my view of the situation, the district did not reply to me. I was then fired. At most of the schools I work at, I am well known among the teachers (and students) I substitute for. I am often requested at schools. When students and parents cause problems, the administration blames me. Some office staff gives off catty and childlike behaviors towards whomever they feel physically inferior to.

I’ve been with this org for over 5 years and in different roles. There’s definitely room for growth. However, there is lots of teacher and staff turnover. New initiatives are implemented all the time. I understand the goal is for student growth but due to high turnover rates and changing initiatives, you never really get a real understanding of what works and what doesn’t work. As a charter school, they face lots of scrutiny and that’s sometimes not conducive to staff well being. Smaller schools are great because you get to know your students and community, but we also lack access to some resources. Depending on your school site admin may or may not be supportive. A high percentage of turnover also translates to more subs in the classroom and less effective behavior management. This makes it difficult for teachers to do all the things they’re asked to do. 

A typical day at work was incredibly stressful with mostly poor management of difficult students. Workplace culture seemed governed by whoever was principal and one school in particular had a very bad principal who forged attendance records to maintain funding. They also had a terribly unqualified, abusive counselor there who got her degree from some unaccredited online school. At another school there was, probably still is some weird sexist vice principal. The hardest part of the job was traveling between 3 schools across 2 counties and trying to manage about 60 students every week. As far as I know, a lot of my colleagues are overworked. Some of the schools are pretty good, but I think it takes a stronger character than I have, plus a deep, unshakable dedication to education.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Teacher 1 salary reported	$95,492 per year
Elementary school teacher 3 salaries reported	$98,850 per year
Education specialist 1 salary reported	$95,492 per year
Instructional aide 1 salary reported	$27.33 per hour
Speech language pathologist 3 salaries reported	$119,633 per year

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